Help Get Portal 2 Released Early - OVERCLOCK HAS BEGUN, Release Incoming!

Hectic Glenn

Hectic Glenn

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[br]

Potato count decreasing - Unlock time only a couple hours away!​

[br]The countdown has reached zero and the result is the Portal 2 Steam system offline website.[br]The result seems to be a website which shows the concurrent users playing each of the potato sack games. The more of us playing the games counts towards to recruited CPUs required to reboot GLaDOS, resulting in the early release of Portal 2. The current projected time is around 90 hours.[br]You can help by just leaving a potato sack game running or playing them more!
 
The CPUs represents the current number of people playing each game. The more CPUs the faster each games individual progress bar fills up.

Each game has different ways of unlocking potatoes. Instructions on getting potatoes here.

Get a free potato by joining this Steam group. You may need to have one of the Potato sack games to receive it. Proof here. Suck it Vegeta.

You must be playing the game to count. It detects if you're AFK (like it says in Glenn's status right now) and you must log hours to make Portal 2 come out faster. Earning potatoes divides the amount of time needed to play to unlock Portal for everyone not just you. If you earn a single potato you will be making a huge difference.
 
For some reason it seems this will take way longer than it should, lol. I expected it to go up a lot faster.
 
First they punished idlers now they're encouraging them. Dohoho, oh Valve.
 
all this for some crappy marketing plan to sell crappy indie games.


I think I'll pass
 
blackout said:
all this for some crappy marketing plan to sell crappy indie games.


I think I'll pass
Click to expand...
This started two weeks ago with updates to a bunch of indie games and you're surprised that it's partially marketing for those indie games? Do you have a learning disability?
 
Is Valve fucking serious? First it was, "Buy this $40 pack of games to participate in the ARG!" Now it's, "Buy this $40 pack of games to get the $44 game you just purchased released early!"
 
Darkside55 said:
Is Valve fucking serious? First it was, "Buy this $40 pack of games to participate in the ARG!" Now it's, "Buy this $40 pack of games to get the $44 game you just purchased released early!"
Click to expand...

You only need one of the games to participate. Even if you don't participate, thousands of others are, either way it will unlock it early. What's the big deal? Win Win.

Valve are ****ing geniuses.
 
blackout said:
all this for some crappy marketing plan to sell crappy indie games.
Click to expand...

I LOVE Valve for this! The more attention indie games receive, the better. Steam is really becoming the house of independent developers. More money to them!
 
ZT said:
You only need one of the games to participate. Even if you don't participate, thousands of others are, either way it will unlock it early.
Click to expand...
Thank god for suckers.

SUCKERS.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
The countdown has reached zero and the result is the Portal 2 Steam system offline website.[br]The result seems to be a website which shows the concurrent users playing each of the potato sack games. The more of us playing the games counts towards to recruited CPUs required to reboot GLaDOS, resulting in the early release of Portal 2. The current projected time is around 90 hours.[br]You can help by just leaving a potato sack game running or playing them more!
Click to expand...

I don't think just leaving a game running is going to cut it. I think you need to unlock potatoes!

EDIT:
Free potato: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nelipot
Others: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1vPutCkoZKA9XL5ZjSuNXfX8NfoeHW3xcrv7DgalKUfE&pli=1
 
I think alot of people are just bitter that the countdown wasn't for an early Portal 2 release. Anyways, this is good for these indie games -- alot of these games are quite good. And no you don't have to buy the entire Potato Sack.. just buy the ones you're interested and play them and maybe Portal 2 will get released early.

If not, don't cry and wait for the actual release date.
 
This link was mentioned above, but it's worth pointing out again. Join this group:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nelipot

to recieve a potato. It appears next to your name on your Steam profile (Mine is etb513, and I have one now). I'm wondering if you need to have a potato for your playtime to count. Then you can just leave one of the games running as well.
 
Quick observation: based on the Glados@Home reboot page and the "Computations Completed for Launch" progress bar, which is progressing over the last two hours since the countdown completed, it appears it will be at about the 5% mark within the next two hours or so.

That means, at the rate it's going (and it may likely go up) the progress bar would actually hit the 100% within about 80 hours or less (late Monday night) at this rate, yet the "Projected Launch" countdown clock seems to be on track with the actual launch time of Tuesday 7AM PST, which at the time of this posting is just under 92 hours.

Just from casual observation at the rate the progress bar is moving compared to the countdown timer, there seems to be a discrepancy ...
 
blackout said:
all this for some crappy marketing plan to sell crappy indie games.


I think I'll pass
Click to expand...

Crappy indie games? Really? Have you played any of them at all? Of the ones I have even the worst of them are still pretty decent. They're priced pretty great. No one's making anyone do this anyways. I think at best we can manage to get it released a couple of days early or something. Otherwise it comes out when on the date that it was supposed to. I'm probably going to do it with the games that I have. I doubt I'll buy anymore since I have far too many games the way it is...

Neat stuff though. I wasn't really too interested in the ARG stuff since I got wrapped up in this stupid crap for other games only to be disappointed. This is probably the best reward.
 
Sigh. I am disappointed.
 
The population of users will increase exponentially no doubt. I'm willing to bet this will finish late tomorrow.
 
Naph said:
The population of users will increase exponentially no doubt. I'm willing to bet this will finish late tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Yeah ... as a followup to my post above from an hour ago, the computation progress bar's rate is moving right along. Based on where it's at after just three hours, we're looking at roughly 60 hours or less, or about midnight on Monday (12AM PST).

Still not sure why the Projected Launch countdown timer doesn't reflect that though.
 
I'm not wasting money on some indie game if what i'm doing doesn't help.

Does anyone know for sure exactly what you have to do?
 
Crappy indie games? Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Best survival-horror game ever. It kicks Alan Wake's ass. Do yourself a favor and get it.
 
I am surprised at how long it is taking. When I first looked at it I thought "Yeah, it'll be done in eight hours, max"
 
yea because it's pretty much BS.

and no im not saying those games are crap but this is a pathetic attempt to make money.. oh wait, its not pathetic, all the idiots are buying into it
 
ZT said:
I am surprised at how long it is taking. When I first looked at it I thought "Yeah, it'll be done in eight hours, max"
Click to expand...
Right now it's on track for the scheduled release date. It's probably going to release on the 19th as it is. Which is perfectly fine of course; they should've just let it happen and not try and tie this potato bs into it. Nothing against the games in the sack, but seriously, setting a counter based on users playing the games, trying to drive up sales for these games by playing on the fact people want Portal 2 in their hands faster? A shameful display. The indie games aren't even getting by on their own merit, regardless of quality. They're getting purchased because PORTAL 2.
 
Except it's entirely probable that people, on purchasing them, will actually have the opportunity to see them for their merits.
 
Darkside55 said:
Nothing against the games in the sack, but seriously, setting a counter based on users playing the games, trying to drive up sales for these games by playing on the fact people want Portal 2 in their hands faster? A shameful display. The indie games aren't even getting by on their own merit, regardless of quality. They're getting purchased because PORTAL 2.
Click to expand...
Exactly. It's called "publicity". What's the problem?
 
Does anybody know what the red bars are different amounts despite the number of people playing them? Is it, as I'm assuming, proportional to the number of people who own the game?
 
Samon Fish said:
Except it's entirely probable that people, on purchasing them, will actually have the opportunity to see them for their merits.
Click to expand...
This. I've gotten back into A reckless disregard for gravity, and I'm liking the sound of that defense grid game.
 
TheOneFreeMan said:
Does anybody know what the red bars are different amounts despite the number of people playing them? Is it, as I'm assuming, proportional to the number of people who own the game?
Click to expand...

I think it's something to do with the amount of potatoes people have in each game acting as a multiplier. So for WEOTW I'm guessing there are a couple of easy potatoes to get which is why it's further along.

Here's how it was explained on RPS:
“Remember the Potato Sack? GlaDOS is apparently drawing “power” from
computers playing games in the potato sack. For every collective 48 hours
for one particular game, that game’s “power bar” goes up by 1%. And Steam
needs to record you actually playing the game – just leaving something
idling in the background does not contribute.

The potatoes we all frantically collected can still be collected – in
fact, you are a major contributor if you even collect one potato in one
game. Potatoes multiply that game’s particular power, so if, say, you
gathered 5 potatoes in Audiosurf and one in Bit.TRIP BEAT, you’d be
multiplying EVERYONE’s efforts in Audiosurf by 6x and BIT.TRIP BEAT by 2x.

Some people seem to think that launching multiple games is a good idea.
This is in fact, not helping at all, because Steam only records keyboard
activity in games launched through Steam, not through external launching.”
Click to expand...
 
TheOneFreeMan said:
It's called "publicity". What's the problem?
Click to expand...

Exactly. Basically, they are saying: "Are you intested in Portal 2? Well, we advise you to get these nice games for a ridiculous price, and maybe you'll get some kind of bonus on Portal 2, too. Your choice."
Nothing more than smart advertising. And targeting indie games shows that Valve cares about small independent companies, which usually don't sell too much.
 
It went from 11 hours ahead of schedule, to 9 hours ahead. Only in 10 minutes. That site doesn't seem accurate.
 
To be fair, I played Defence Grid, AAAAAAAAA, and Killing Floor before the PS, but only starting playing it again once the ARG started.

Has anybody felt that this ARG has only made themselves feel inferior, because I played all these games, but haven't contributed anything for the ARG. The only time when I caught something interesting is the "secret is Barmy" text on the wall in killing floor, but somebody had already posted that on the wiki
 
And Steam needs to record you actually playing the game – just leaving something
idling in the background does not contribute.
Click to expand...

Couldn't you just- Open game, tape down spacebar to keyboard, walk away?
 
I don't think the prices for any of the potato sack games are ridiculous... Maybe this situation is ridiculous, but not the deals for all of those games, some of which are very good, especially for the price they regularly are, let alone the price right now.
 
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